16-Year-Old Is Fatally Shot While Playing Basketball in Brooklyn

NYPD Officers found the Oluwadurotimi Joseph Oyebola, known as Timi, with a gunshot wound to his head shortly before 4 p.m. It is said the child had been playing basketball after school with three friends at Chester Playground, which is next to Public School 396, when at least one or two people fired shots from the southern end of the park, Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey told reporters.

Two males were seen fleeing south on Chester Street, the police said.

The child was rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The police believe that the boy was not the target of the shooting .

Timi resided in Jamaica, Queens, but atteneded a charter school near the playground, Deputy Chief Michael Kemper said. The shots were fired more than 100 feet away from the boys, Chief Kemper said.

“He was a really, really good kid,” he said. “There’s a strong possibility that he was the unintended target of this bullet.”

Oluwadurotimi was in 11th grade at Brooklyn Ascend High School in Brownsville, said Steven F. Wilson, the chief executive of the Ascend charter school network. Oluwadurotimi’s school is about a half-mile west of the playground where he was shot.

Oluwadurotimi moved to New York with his parents and sister from Lagos, Nigeria, in 2013, said his father, David Oyebola.

“He was a good boy. He was my strength,” Mr. Oyebola said. “It’s a big loss that I can never recover from.”